capt_oats

Hmmmm..

I've still got my Robbie Gotts stock.

I only ever saw him a couple of times with the u20s/Reserves and he was obviously way younger at that point but he's closer to being an actual wide player than an 'anywhere across the front 3' type. Posted this the other day but here are some clips of him playing with Leeds u23s - it's less about what he's actually doing and more about where he is on the park. @Self-raising Lazarus touches on it above but if our go to is going to be this 4141/433 then Spittal is probably the only player we've got who's a natural fit in that wide role - the likes of Efford and to a lesser degree Shields are a bit more clunky (IMO).

Extremely invested in this actually happening. Next on the list?

Oh... Incidentally, according to another report, it seems that the wrinkle is Leeds are wanting him to sign a new deal before they OK loaning him out as he only has a year left on his current contract.

Aye, Phil Hay did a long read for The Athletic about him and there was also a podcast Stephen McManus contributed to. The fact that since he left he's also done an interview with the club website (was this maybe in a programme as well?) didn't hint at any acrimony: https://www.motherwellfc.co.uk/2020/10/27/stuart-mckinstry-making-strides-with-leeds-united/

The fact that Leeds supposedly want to loan McKinstry out to get him games and Hartley was looking to take him to Hartlepool in L2 a while back meant it seemed a really, really fucking obvious shout especially given what were's missing in the side (natural width). When Hammell spoke about a couple of "slow burning" deals I wondered if he might be one given he's Leeds player and it's really up to them what happens with him. Feels like that quote is essentially saying we're not not interested. Fwiw, this is what he's been up to...

Oh...missed this the other day.

To that point, these are the players with 1 year left: Fox, O'Donnell, Carroll, Ojala, McGinn, Cornelius, Goss, Efford, Mahon We'll obviously do right by Carroll but beyond that it feels like some are better fits than others for what Hammellball may potentially look like. That's true of the squad in general tbf. I think both things are true tbh. We've got a handful of really genuinely good Premiership level players who were being stymied by what they were being asked to do along with a couple other "do a job" types but we also need another 4 or 5 brought in to actually be any good.

Aye, to sign a bunch of players then actively make a choice to play in a way that doesn't play to any of their strengths is a bold move for sure. To be clear I'm not losing the run of myself after one good performance but I was reading a lot of furious Aberdeen reactions (in itself very funny - 100% recommend) along the lines of "this is the same team that lost to Sligo Rovers". I mean, that's factually true, but we lost to Sligo at a point where we were obviously undercooked, hadn't played a competitive game and had a manager who on top of having never managed in a European competition had seemingly also turned Colonel Kurtz on us. In as much as it's too early to judge what's going to happen with Hammell, it also feels a bit too early for the Sligo debacle to define the direction of travel for the season given we've taken the step of emptying the manager early (which we didn't do with McCall after Stjarnan).

A bit of KVV chat in the bold Sked's article in The Scotsman:

I've not been down on the squad as much as others but this was pretty much my main takeaway from watching the full 90 of Saturday back. Essentially it's clear that Alexanderball was a choice. He had a group of players who are capable of putting in a footballing performance like we saw on Saturday after a fortnight with Hammell but he chose to play percentages instead. Which is fine, he kept us up and then he finished 5th and qualified for Europe playing that way. It's been interesting reading the post-game reaction and the number of people who seemed to take the Sligo games as a bellwether for our season rather than a fucking cry for help.

Of course it's from the hat. Surprised you even had to ask tbh. Tbf, it's nothing as deep as that. It's just a forum populated entirely by VLs and arseholes.

So, roughly speaking...is this us now? Obviously there's been plenty of #YoungMotherwell on the bench but this builder only lets me add 2 players per position and I've left Carroll and McGinley out as one is definitely long term injured and the other seems a bit more vague. There are still a couple of slightly awkward fits in there IMO. I noticed on Steelmen that there was a mention that Hammell had said pre-match that "he'd hoped to have 2 new additions signed yesterday".

Shout out to Edwyn Collins and Grace Maxwell btw.

There's a bit of that but I'd honestly just imagine it's to reduce the number of roasters from our support having aneurysms in the club's mentions with their terrible takes and getting bent out of shape over a back up keeper. I mean, we've frequently announced players 'subject to international clearance' so it really just seems like it's a case of housekeeping and we've held off making the announcement until the dust has settled and Hammell's been announced. Essentially what I'm taking from the language is we've signed the bold Aston, he's been around the club for a while, we didn't announce him at the time because Alexander had been binned, he's not a Hammell signing, it doesn't mean Kelly is leaving.

We've low key announced we've signed the back-up 'keeper. No socials posts (as yet), just a news story on the official. Despite the copy in The Record's tweet the news story reads: So he's not Hammell's first addition.

To pick up on this, it was a weird quirk of Robinson's last season with us that by the point he resigned (December 31st 2020) we'd not only failed to come from behind but we'd failed to even score an equalising goal - that was after 23 games (we'd won 5 drawn 6 lost 12). So there's definitely a familiarity about the chat around Robbo's version of Saints at the moment. We also started the season with stats like these (we lost all 3 games 1-0):

Congratulations @dezz

15 minutes of Steven Hammell chat...

Fwiw, he played 24 games for QPR last season (21 starts in the Championship). I've no idea why he missed the last 6 games of the season. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/lee-wallace/leistungsdaten/spieler/36657/plus/0?saison=2021 I mean, it kind of feels like we're in a place where we 100% need known quantities and I suppose in this specific case we have precisely zero first team left backs available so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

More quotes from Hammell's press conference: and Sean Goss Tbh, I genuinely can't read anything that's coming out the club just now as anything other than low key digs at Alexander.